The Volokh Conspiracy
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Peter Beinart Has Gone Full Antisemite
In his recent book and an oped column, he channels Nazi and other antisemitic propaganda about the Purim Holiday
The basic story of the holiday of Purim, which starts Thursday night, is this. The King of the Persian empire takes a Jewish bride, Esther, who conceals her Jewish identity. Meanwhile, the king's evil vizier, Haman, plots a genocide of Jews throughout the empire, and wins the king's blessing to undertake the massacre on the 14th day of the month of Adar. Esther's uncle Mordechai gets wind of the plot, and beseeches Esther to intervene. Esther persuades the king to execute Haman, but the decree approving the massacre cannot be revoked. The king instead gives Jews throughout the empire the right to defend themselves, and the following transpires:
For the Jews that were in Shushan gathered themselves together on the fourteenth day also of the month Adar, and slew three hundred men at Shushan; but on the prey they laid not their hand. But the other Jews that were in the king's provinces gathered themselves together, and stood for their lives, and had rest from their enemies, and slew of their foes seventy and five thousand, but they laid not their hands on the prey on the thirteenth day of the month Adar; and on the fourteenth day of the same rested they, and made it a day of feasting and gladness
The text could not be clearer that the Jews rose in self-defense, and killed not random people, but the enemies who were preparing the genocide.
Nevertheless, for centuries antisemites have distorted the text to suggest that Jews were inherently bloodthirsty chauvinists who sought to massacre the people around them. The Nazis, for obvious reasons, particularly loved to rely on a story about Jews fighting back against genocidal enemies to libel Jews. The holiday loomed so large in Nazi consciousness that just before Hitler henchmen Julius Streicher was hanged, he shouted out, "Purimfest 1946!" But you don't have to take my word for it:
So what sort of vicious antisemite would spread similar libels about Purim in 2025? For one, New York Times writer Peter Beinart. Beinart has evolved over the years from "liberal Zionist" to "non-Zionist" to "anti-Zionist" to his later iteration, which is "deranged antisemitic anti-Zionist."
Here he is in a column in the Guardian, based on his recent book, explaining Purim in the same terms as the Nazis and other antisemites:
On the 13th day of the month of Adar, the Jews kill 75,000 people. They declare the 14th "a day of feasting and merrymaking". With the blood of their foes barely dry, the Jews feast and make merry. That's the origin of Purim.
Purim isn't only about the danger Gentiles pose to us. It's also about the danger we pose to them.
For most of our history, when Jews had little capacity to impose our will via the sword, the conclusion of the book of Esther was a harmless and even understandable fantasy. Who can blame a tormented people for dreaming of a world turned upside down? But the ending reads differently when a Jewish state wields life and death power over millions of Palestinians who lack even a passport. Today, these blood-soaked verses should unsettle us. When we recite them aloud in synagogue, we should employ the anguished, sorrowful tune in which we chant the book of Lamentations, which depicts the destruction of our ancient temples.
Instead, most of us ignore the violence that concludes the Esther scroll. Some contemporary Jews justify it as self-defense. On the far right, some revel in it. But they're the exception. More often, we look away. We focus on what they tried to do to us.
No, Peter, we don't look away. According to the story (which is, fwiw, historical fiction), armed mobs of 75,000 people came to murder the entire Jewish population of the Persian Empire, who were innocent of any wrongdoing. The Jews killed them before they could do it. Hooray! If only someone had done this to the Nazis in 1938, we could be celebrating Purim II, instead of mourning on Yom HaShoah.
If this doesn't cost Beinart his job on the New York Times op-ed page, it's a terrible sign of how antisemitism has been normalized in elite discourse.
